Crucible
by LoquaciousQuark
Summary: Danarius's efforts to tame his recaptured slave include a salve laced with a powerful aphrodisiac. After days of denial and solitary confinement, Fenris is close to breaking. Hawke gets there first.


**AN:** A kmeme fill. _Fenris is recaptured by Danarius (how it happens isn't important. In an attempt to re-break Fenris' spirit, Danarius locks him in solitary confinement and pumps him full of a drug that makes his libido skyrocket. Self-pleasuring is either impossible for some reason, or doesn't satisfy his hunger for sex, and Fenris is driven nearly mad with WANT. F!Hawke comes to his rescue, and it's all he can do not to jump her bones the second he sees her. Cue super desperate, OMG-I-need-this-so-bad, probably rough sex with multiple orgasms (either because of the drug or because Fenris and/or elves are capable of it)._

I was a bit hesitant about posting this fill here because of the explicit content, but for all this site's problems I've been here a long time, and I really dislike having an incomplete archive. So for now, at least, I've decided to go ahead and put it up. That said, if the fic does end up being removed, it is also mirrored under the same name on AO3.

Enjoy!

* * *

The first day is the worst.

It is not only the deep and total despair of once more standing in these white marbled halls, nor the quick-heating horror when he realizes he is being led not to his master's chambers but to the small soundless cells beneath the estate. What worsens all of it is the utter humiliation of being handled like the animal he once was: stripped and scrubbed and held in place by the back of his neck as gloved, impersonal fingers smear a tincture that reeks of orichalcum and the oil-thick rust of blood magic over the length of his cock.

Fenris does not speak through this. He has heard his master's instructions as they all have, and he knows—he has learned, too painfully—that his defiance is futile in the end.

They throw him into a cell, still naked, and he staggers forward a few steps before catching himself on the opposite wall. The room was once white; now it has faded to a dingy grey to match the grey slate floor. The ceiling is too high above him to reach should he somehow manage both a hook and noose; the one window is just as impossible, high and small and barred, meant more for air than the one tiny square of pale light it affords him. A flat, stained bedroll lies crumpled in one corner, a clay chamberpot in the other.

There is nothing else.

"_So,_" comes his master's voice behind him, low and cool and deeply satisfied, and because he is a slave and because this is expected of a slave, he turns and goes to one knee. "My dear Fenris," his master says, only his face visible through the grating set in the lyrium-runed door. "Already you look more at home like this. How pleased I am to see it."

"Of course, Master," Fenris says, and despite his every effort there is shame in his voice, and frustration, and grief.

He knows his master hears it—knows too that for that there will be punishment and pain—but for now Danarius only permits himself a thin bladed smile. "Stand up, my pet."

"Of course, Master," Fenris says again, and lowers his face as he pushes to his feet.

Danarius's gaze sweeps over him like a lighthouse's beacon, caressing every inch of skin and lyrium laid bare for his perusal. He lingers on the muscles of Fenris's stomach, on the new-old scar above his elbow where a qunari blade had caught—and on the already-heating cock between his legs.

"Have a care these next few days," he says, "and even this little penance I've set you will become…_pleasant,_ hmm?"

Fenris bows at the waist and Danarius smiles, and closes the grate—and is gone.

He is alone.

-.-

Orichalcum worked quickly, Fenris had learned long ago, quicker than a magister's mood changed at a glittering gala—but this, laced as it is with blood magic, works quicker still, and in less than an hour Fenris has begun to sweat. The pressure between his legs is hot and hard and unforgiving; he twice brings himself off into the chamberpot, but it affords him no relief and seems in fact to make the room _hotter_, and when he can no longer stand under the pressure he curls up on the foul bedroll with his back to the door and closes his eyes.

_That_ is a mistake. The moment he shuts out the grey room Hawke rises instead, Hawke as she'd been the last time he'd seen her, laughing at something Isabela had said, her hair falling into her face, her hand reaching for his—

—_waist, and lower, long slender fingers dancing over the lyrium laid into his thighs, following one narrow vine with her fingertip where it arches up and down again to spiral around his cock—and then those fingers curling around him, gently, as he can never remember being touched before, the softness a sweet torture of its own—_

—that does not end, because the master does not wish it to end, because the master enjoys taking his pleasure while denying others their own. "Please," he begs, rough and broken, and Danarius takes his chin in one hand, forces up his head to see his master's smile—

—Danarius's smile, in Hawke's face, and Hawke's low voice speaking his master's words, and hands on him, on his chest and his back and his thighs and it is too many, too many, too many—

Fenris wakes with a start.

The room is dark with night, the hallway outside his door silent. He is on his back on the bedroll, his knees bent, his chest heaving—and his hips off the ground, thrusting into nothing, the heavy weight of his cock lying against his stomach, unrelieved, unsoftened.

With a dragging sob of breath, Fenris pushes up to one elbow, then to his side. No rest with sleep, then, not while this cruelty lingers; no refuge from the constant betrayal of his memories. A weak square of light falls on the opposite wall, thrown by what two or three faint stars can be seen through his window; Fenris forces himself to his feet, crosses the room in two steps, and sinks down again, his back to the wall and his face to the high window.

No sleep—so he will count the stars instead, all the three stars he can see, over and over, until they are gone.

-.-

The second day, then, is the worst.

He dozes lightly and wakes, still hard; he paces the little room in tight, uncomfortable steps; he brings himself off again in a moment of weakness, thinking of Hawke, and chokes on the shame of it—chokes too on the heat that rises again more swiftly the moment it begins to ease. He must not use her memory this way, he tells himself when he can think, despite that it is three years gone; she of all people should be free of this place of humiliation and pain, not treated as fodder for hopeless, joyless relief that does not stay.

_Hawke's mouth pressed against his, her tongue sliding along his lower lip—_

"Stop," Fenris says aloud, and passes a trembling hand over her forehead where he is sweating.

The door opens near noon to admit a slave. She is in thin white linen, tall, blonde hair cropped short around her ears—and in her hands she carries a coarse wooden tray with a small bowl of overripe fruit and hard cheese and a cup of water. At once every nerve in Fenris's body fires, his muscles tensing, his cock _straining _even through the sudden upswelling humiliation of his nakedness_—_but she only kneels beside his bedroll and places the tray on the stone before her.

"The master wishes you to eat," she tells him flatly.

"I am not hungry." _I do not trust myself._

An unseen hand bangs on the door hard enough to make both of them jump. "Eat," says a guard's voice. "Or we beat you within an inch of your life. And then we beat her harder."

Once the threat of pain would have meant as little to him as a wind-caught leaf; now, when the woman's eyes go hard with fear and resignation Fenris sees instead another woman, an elf-girl brought from a slaver's cavern into daylight, Hawke bending over her in comfort and kindness.

"Excuse me," he says, stiff with discomfort and shame, and he crosses the room on unsteady legs to kneel across from her. He eats quickly, ignoring the seeds and the hard rinds, ignoring the murmur of voices in the hall and the _clink_ of coins exchanged.

When the bowl is empty and the cup drained he sits back, preparing to retreat to what little sanctuary the far side of the room offers—but before he can do so much as stand the woman has risen on her knees and pulled her white shift over her head.

"_What—_" Fenris starts, recoiling, and the woman flushes.

"Your other needs," she says—nearly snaps—and gestures roughly at his thickened cock. "I am to attend to them as well."

_There_ is the wall—Fenris presses himself against it, fists clenched, trying desperately to push the white heat her words had sparked in his belly into the wall's grey-stoned coolness. "No," he says. "I have—eaten. I—require nothing more."

There is a burst of raucous laughter from the hallway, too many voices raised in mockery for the guards' regular complement, and Fenris wonders what sort of audience he has gathered, the favorite slave returned in disgrace, stripped of volition and dignity in a tiny cell beneath the estate, chained to the basest of all animal urges as surely as if he wears his old collar. "_No_," he says again, and the woman's lips part—

—but another voice reaches them first, a cold imperious tone that silences the guards in the hallway. "Enough," says Danarius when the door opens, and at his gesture the woman gathers her clothing and the tray and flees.

Danarius steps in, flanked by three guards that immediately force Fenris to his knees and pin his arms behind his back. His narrow, long-nailed fingers trace over Fenris's scalp, down the back of his neck—and _oh_, how much he wants more, how easy it would be to press up into that touch, to find _peace_—but instead he grits his teeth and he lowers his eyes, and he says nothing when those fingers drop onto the line of lyrium at the nape of his neck and find the power that seeps into them, curling around his throat to drain him dry.

Then Danarius says a word, and the guards lift Fenris's head until he can meet his master's smile. "You've developed quite a strong little will while you've been gone, dear one, haven't you?"

He says, helplessly, "Yes, Master."

Danarius smiles once more, and draws one gold-ringed finger down Fenris's cheek, and then he turns and heads for the door. "Treat him again," his master says to the guard outside, "and have him watched at all times. I wish to know the moment he breaks."

The guards salute as Danarius departs—and then one of them comes in with heavy leather gloves and that little black clay pot, and Fenris cannot help the frantic motion he makes as the guard dips his hand into the tincture.

"Stop," he says, and again, "_stop_," but they do not stop and they do not yield, their grip tight on his arms as iron, inflexible on his cock as one of Aveline's guardsmen taking in a prisoner, brisk and efficient and without mercy.

They leave him sagging against the wall, his arms bruised, aching from both arousal and rough handling, and the door slams shut behind them.

-.-

The third day is _torture._

Every inch of his skin is alive with fire, every gasp of air like a grater dragged into his chest. The bedroll is sandpaper on his back, the walls as rough as granite to his heightened senses; every whisper from the hallway might as well be the deafening blare of a trumpet for how painful it is.

But none of it compares to the agony between his legs.

His cock is thick and swollen, ache bleeding into real pain with every heartbeat, hot to the touch and _craving_ heat, craving touch all the same. Relieving himself alone is a torment, to say nothing of the rasp as he stands or sits. Danarius—Hawke—even the elf woman—it would not matter, not now, not with his mind shredded into smeared half-thoughts that cannot connect to each other. He needs touch—_needs_ it, needs a hand or a mouth or spread legs more than he needs air or water, because he is going mad with want and there is nothing—nothing—nothing that can stop this flame-touched _aching_, nothing in the world but this small dim cell and the barred window and the ruin of an elf inside it.

_Hawke_, he thinks desperately, and he seizes his cock—Danarius rises instead, bearded and smiling and cruel as winter, and he snatches his hand back as if burnt. His white hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat; his heart _pounds_, thudding in his ears so hard he can barely hear the door open behind him.

"Fenris?" says a woman's voice, soft and low, and he turns—

He says, disbelieving, "Hawke?"

Sweat drips in his eyes and he blinks, scrubbing it away with the heel of his hand. The hair is right, dark and shining, and the skin is the same pale shade—but even through the red haze of the orichalcum and the blood magic he can see that it is _not_ Hawke. The eyes are too small, too light, the mouth too thin—and the expression one Fenris has never seen Hawke wear: one of dark and open lust.

"Fenris," she says again, the word a caress on skin that starves for it, and she steps, naked, into the room.

Fenris cannot move. The sun is setting outside and gold light smears across her shoulder, her breast—he blinks again and it _is_ Hawke, Hawke smiling, Hawke reaching out to brush her hand gently across his shoulder, down his bare chest, ghosting over the muscles of his stomach that clench at the promise of touch.

Her lips press against the corner of his mouth. They are soft and gentle, blessedly cool against his superheated skin, but there is something—something sour—

"Get off," he gasps, and he shoves her away even as he stumbles back to the wall beneath the window. "Don't—touch me—do not—"

The woman—not Hawke, _not Hawke_!—straightens and wipes his sweat from her cheek. "Don't struggle," she says kindly, and steps closer again until she can press her palm to the rabbit-beating of his heart. "It will be easier if you pretend."

"You are only her shadow," Fenris says, breathless, arching into her touch and pulling away again. The stone might as well have claws in his shoulders for how little strength he has to stand, let alone resist. He needs—this—_her_—needs relief, desperately, and when she leans closer he rocks against the swell of her hip.

She kisses his cheek, his temple, the point of his ear—and _that_ tears a low, desperate groan from his throat—and then she whispers, "A shadow with flesh, Fenris. A shadow with a body. All for your use."

For a moment his world blackens, narrowing only to the point of light that is her voice, her dove-soft fingers trailing over his waist—then the word comes, dragging out of him like a hook set into the earth, scarring dark furrows into the ground it leaves behind. Fenris says, "No."

He says it again, louder, when the almost-Hawke tries to grip his arm, and then he is in the corner, as far away from her as he can get, sinking against the wall and bracing himself on it at the same time. She watches him quietly, observes his ragged, thin breathing, his sweat-stained hair, the lyrium sucked dry—and his untouched cock still jutting hard and flushed between his legs. "The master will not be pleased," she tells him at last.

Fenris lets out a short, mocking snort between breaths. No, the master will not be pleased—_this_ is his trap, ruined again, though the cost to Fenris seems greater than any annoyance Danarius might face at the failing. Fenris knows that at a word Danarius could have him chained to a wall, a slave's legs spread open before him, and he would be helpless to resist—but that is not what Danarius wants, not that animal rutting that signifies as little as a dog in heat. Danarius wants _more_, wants the conscious surrender of Fenris's mind, wants him bent and broken not because he has been chained that way but because he no longer has the will to straighten his back on his own.

The woman exits, quietly. The last gasp of sunset sinks behind the trees.

He will be strong—only a little longer.

-.-

There is no fourth day.

Oh, there is a _dawn_, but Fenris does not count it. There is no point to marking the days, not for a slave: there is only this day and the day after and the day after that, all the same and all unending in their routines and their rituals and their despair.

Sleep comes only in uneasy, fitful bursts, thick with dreams of Danarius and memories of Hawke—and the reverse—and waking brings with it only the heated agony between his legs and air too thin to breathe and nerves that scrape under his skin. He gets to his feet, makes himself limp to one side of the room and back again, forces himself to use the chamberpot despite the discomfort.

Danarius will need him fit, after all.

"Still alive?" one of the guards jeers through the open grating, and drags the back of his metal glove across the steel to make it shriek.

Fenris says nothing.

"Answer, boy, or I'll ask the magister to come down here and make you. You've cost me a pretty penny so far."

He does not wish to see Danarius. He gives a wordless grunt and turns away, and the guard slams the grate closed. "Good flank," he hears the man say to one of his fellows. "Good arse altogether. His whole back's got muscle, though of course he'll need to get his strength back after this little venture." There's a burst of laughter and the man continues: "I wouldn't mind taking a turn myself. He's panting like a whore in there."

"Not before the magister," another man cautions, and there's another ripple of laughter. "But I'd put a sov on the whole thing being finished in there by the end of the day."

"A solid wager," says a new voice—a woman's voice—and the room falls silent—

And Fenris's head jerks up as if on a line. He knows that voice. He knows it better than his own.

_Hawke._

The tone is different, icy with anger and open threat—but it is Hawke's voice, and Varric's light steps in the hallway outside, and the familiar _shing_ of metal as Isabela's daggers slide free of their sheaths—

The guard's voice again, stripped of humor: "You're not supposed to be in here. None of you. Where did you come from?"

He is at the door before he realizes he has stood. The grating is locked shut from the outside; there is no give to it when he pushes with his fingers between the bars, no thin crack of light he can pry his quick-bitten nails into.

"I'm telling you you'd better pay your friend that sovereign. You won't have a chance later."

The ringing of swords and the creak of bows—

"Fine," Hawke says, and then there are only screams.

He does not know how long the battle lasts. Long enough that his heart races and slows and races again so that his ribs feel as if they might break; long enough that he remembers the hardness between his legs, blessedly forgotten for those few brief seconds, and cringes with shame. But then, too soon—at _last_—the last man dies, his final breath a gasping scream of "_Danarius!_"

"That won't do you any good at all, sweet thing," he hears Isabela say over the man's dying gurgle. "I'm afraid that one's stuck between a rock and a hard place."

Varric groans. "That isn't funny, Rivaini."

"'Course it is. See, Kitten's got him against the wall with stone, right? And every time he wakes up Aveline hits him on the head with something hard."

"Would you help me?" Hawke's voice again, closer than Fenris expects, close enough that he can hear the irritation and the worry, close enough that he _twitches_—

He says, rough and hoarse, "Hawke?"

There is a long silence—and then scrabbling, scraping at the door and the latch of the grate. It flies open as if Hawke has ignored the latch completely and just torn the thing open—and—there she is, there _she_ is, not some shadow, not some ghost made up to tempt him. Solid. _Real_.

"_Fenris,_" she breathes, her bright eyes wide (_her_ eyes), her face pale under her dark hair (_her_ hair, and _her face_) as she presses against the grating. "Thank the Maker—thank Andraste. Are you all right? Did they—how long have you been in here? Do we need to get Anders? Isabela, go get Anders—"

"_No_," he croaks at the same time Isabela says, "Not a chance. I want to see if he's naked in there."

He wants to laugh—he would have, in another world, but here it is too near his humiliation and his anguish, and instead Fenris only turns his face away.

"Fenris?" Hawke says again, softer, and then she looks over her shoulder. "Have you found the keys yet?"

"No," Fenris tries again, panic clawing up his throat, but Isabela is already at the door, tossing her head.

"Keys are for fools with clumsy fingers," she tells Hawke, the latch rattling—and then the lock clicks open.

He knows the terror is in his voice, knows too that it will mean nothing to them. "Stop," he says even as he steps quickly away from the grating, puts his back to the wall beside the door. "Hawke," he says, though it comes so rough and quiet she will not be able to hear it, barely louder than the scraping of his naked back against the stone as he sinks to sit on the floor with his knees bent. The door swings open, a feather-brush of wind against his skin that makes him flinch, and then he sees Hawke's metal boots slip in before he drops his head between his bent legs and his arms over them, before she turns and closes the door behind her.

Then two soft thumps as she falls to her knees beside him. Her hands hover over his bare shoulder and he can feel the heat of them even through her gloves, can feel the weight of her in the air around him as if her insistent solidity alone might bring him back into humanity.

Fenris," she whispers so close he can feel her breath, and his name—his _name_, in her voice—

He will not survive this.

"Don't touch me," he rasps, and she jerks her hands away as if he has stung her. "Hawke—"

"I won't, I swear, just—will you at least look at me?"

It would have been easier if he had not heard the tears in her throat—but Fenris lifts his head like a stone and looks at Hawke. Her hands are fisted on her knees, her gloves and gauntlets gone, her leather tunic stained with blood and smelling of sweat. There is blood on her nose, too, and in her hair, and a smudge of something black and sticky across one arm—and anxiety in her face and worry in her brow and he wants her, he wants her, he _wants her_—

Fenris drags his hands over his face, moving to drop it again between his raised knees—but Hawke grabs his wrist to stop him and the touch burns like a brand, and before he can stop it a thin groan of misery slips between his teeth. "Hawke, _don't!_"

"Fenris—"

"Just go. Just leave me alone—"

"Absolutely not. I am _not_ about to lose you again—"

"Leave it!"

"Just tell me what's wrong, Fenris!"

His ears are roaring—his cock is _aching_—Fenris lunges up to his knees and seizes Hawke's face in both hands, barely registering the look of utter surprise on her face before he slams his mouth over hers. Her teeth come down hard on his lower lip and it _hurts_—but he needs that hurt, needs more the soft noise she makes when her mouth opens under his to allow him in. Three years and it might have been yesterday; she tastes just as he remembers, and he takes her mouth as if he owns it, as if he has the _right_ to it, crushing her against him as if that might be enough to undo this Void-born _curse_—

Fenris shoves himself back, half-crawling, half-falling, until he can turn against the grey-faded wall on the far side of the room. He flattens his hands and his forehead against it, struggling for breath, struggling against an arousal that, now stoked, threatens to consume him whole. There is sweat sliding down his neck, his temples. His eyes burn.

"Well," Hawke says behind him, not troubling to hide her confusion and her—hurt. "I suppose I've had less enthusiastic greetings."

"Forgive me," Fenris groans, pushing his head into the wall, his eyes clenched closed. He cannot even care that he is naked before Hawke, that she can see the bare lines of his back and buttocks where he kneels. There is only this accursed aching, and an impossible heat, and a desperate driving need that cannot be quenched. "Forgive me, Hawke."

"And now you act like you've done something wrong. Please, just tell me what's going on!"

It would be easier if she would just leave him here to drown. Fenris searches for words and it is so hard, his lucidity gone, like grasping mist in the red hazy field of blood magic left in his mind. "There was," he says, and "Danarius gave me," and "blood magic," and then his throat goes dry and he has to swallow twice before he can speak again. "A salve," he says at last, heaving out the words like corpses thrown off a ship at sea. "Laced with orichalcum."

"Orichalcum is an aphrodisiac," Hawke says, and then she draws in a sudden short breath, and Fenris can hear the comprehension catch hold. His fists clench on the wall by his head—now she understands, and now she will understand why she has to leave—and when he hears her get to her feet and move to the door it is no more than he expects.

All the same—it _hurts_ more than he expects.

But she only says, "You two had better go on back to the others for now," and then the door closes again. Fenris lifts his head, starts to turn—and there is Hawke kneeling beside him again, loosening the catches of her armor, refusing to meet his eyes as a flush begins to crawl up her neck.

"Hawke," he says, bewildered. "What are you…?"

She pulls one of her shoulder-guards free and tosses it roughly towards the bedroll. Then, her eyes darting to his and away again, she says, "Well, someone's got to help you with this, right?"

White heat shoots through him like lightning, fraying what is left of his sanity into shreds, but Fenris holds desperately to what he can. "I will not—take advantage of you like that," he says doggedly. Three years—this is _not_ how he meant this to happen—

But Hawke, determined despite her now-earnest blush, only reaches forward with one bared hand and pushes his naked knee down, away, until she can see what Danarius's tincture has done to him. "All right," she says then as her cool hand moves to cup his cheek, "Have at me."

Then Hawke, glorious Hawke with one shoulder-guard missing and her tunic stained with blood and her armor loose—_grins_.

And Fenris is on her.

It galls him in a distant way that he cannot even pretend to control, but Hawke is here and willing and _real_ and no shadow, and she is of all people the one who understands him best, even when he is aching and desperate and _starving_ for touch. Her tongue slides along his as she scrabbles at her armor, at the catches of her belt, then abandons them both to wrap her arms around his neck when he drags his hands through her hair. Her armor is shock-cold on his skin, her leather rough and dragging, but he doesn't care, he doesn't _care_—

"How long?" she says breathlessly between kisses.

"Four days," Fenris says against her mouth, because only slaves do not count, and then because it is also true, he says, "Three years."

"Too long," Hawke agrees, and then his teeth are at her throat and her head is back to bare more of that pale skin to him.

Something inside him screams at that, a wild and primal part of him that revels in this fierce abandon of control. His fingers tangle in her belt, helpless, shaking, slick with sweat; he grips her waist and rocks against her instead, mindlessly. "Forgive me. Hawke. I cannot—I cannot wait—"

"Got it," she gasps, and her own trembling fingers dive into a pocket; she emerges again with a golden stamina draught that she uncorks with her teeth. "Any port in a storm," she says, gulping a laugh around half the draught, and Fenris leans forward until his forehead rests on her shoulder. The rest of the viscous liquid spills over her fingers like honey; she pauses only a moment for them both to breathe, and then she wraps her fingers around his cock.

She might as well have shot him. Fenris jerks forward into her shoulder, crying out an oath; Hawke slides her other hand into his hair, holding him in place, anchoring him, and begins to move.

It doesn't take long, heated as he is, tight as he has been wound over four days of denial. There is not even time to groan a warning—he simply comes on the stone between them, sudden and _hard_, his back bowed like a sapling in a storm. Hawke presses her lips to his temple and holds him through it, stroking him through the aftershocks like the ground has given way beneath them both.

"Better?" she asks, when his shaking has calmed.

"Better," he says, because it is. He is still hard, so hard it hurts—but the edge is gone, or going, the red haze beginning to recede into something nearer mortal. "Not enough, but—better."

Hawke laughs and the sound is like a balm on his raw-flayed skin, on the rawer places of his mind. "I'm up for round two if you are," she says, and kisses him again.

Between the two of them they manage to get her belt free. The urgency is still there, still snapping at his heels like a wolf; Hawke only has one boot off before he is on her again, pushing her to her back, ashamed of himself and demanding more all the same. She shoves her trousers and her smalls to her knees, kicking them off the one bare foot as if she knows the senseless _need_ that drives him, the want that blackens into a roar at the sight of her laid bare before him like a sacrifice to the Maker himself.

"Well?" she asks, one eyebrow lifted above her still-colored cheeks as she leans back on the bare stone floor, and she hooks her naked leg around his waist.

"_Futuo_," Fenris gasps, because there are no other words left in him for the depth of his gratefulness to this woman, and he grips her hip as he drives himself into her.

_Futuo_. He wants to curse again, but he has no breath left for it—Hawke clenches around him, groaning, and for a moment he sees stars—this is too much, too _much_, too close to memory and too perfect for reality for him to comprehend. Her other leg comes around him, still trapped in its leathers and boot, and then she wraps both arms around his neck and holds him there, staring into his eyes as if to set him ablaze from the inside out.

"All right then," she says, her grin hard as diamonds, and she rocks her hips up against him.

What is left of the little restraint he had clawed together snaps. His hand clenches on her waist; his toes strain against the cool floor for leverage as he moves. He is desperate, single-minded in his focus, _craving_ this and craving more—her bare leg slips and slides on his back before she hooks her ankles together, and the hard points of her remaining boot dig painfully into the small of his back—but her eyes are bright and fixed on his, her lips parting with each frantic thrust not in warning but in _pleasure_. Then, suddenly, she throws her head back against the stone, her shoulder-guard scraping white lines in the slate, releasing him with one arm to grip her own hair—

And Fenris comes at the sight of it, his jaw clenched, ramming himself so hard between Hawke's legs they both slide across the floor. He does swear again, when he can, when he comes back to himself to find Hawke's hand on his neck and himself still hard, still buried deep inside her. "Forgive me," he says again, humiliated beyond measure.

"You _should_ be sorry," she says tartly, though the smile in her voice says otherwise. "I was almost there myself."

"Let me—" Fenris starts, awkward and graceless as he drops one hand towards her waist, but Hawke catches him first, presses her lips to the tips of his fingers, draws the longest one into her mouth and sucks gently. He freezes, his eyes locked to her mouth; she smiles and flicks her tongue against his finger, and he drags in a ragged, torn breath that hangs in the air around them.

"There will be time for that later," Hawke says as his finger slides free, as she turns her attention instead to the armor that still covers her from the waist up. "This is for you."

For you—for_ him_, as if he deserves it, as if he is not the weakest of them all. But somehow Fenris senses that that thought would neither encourage Hawke nor please her, and above all else she deserves pleasing after this. Her gorget comes loose in one piece, and then her other shoulder-guard, and as Fenris carefully pulls her tunic over her head she pries her other foot free at last of her boot and trousers. She kicks them away into a corner, forgotten—and then Hawke is kissing him again, a _real_ kiss, not just a thing of heat and want and desperation—though that is there too—but something deeper, and realer, something so bright it hurts Fenris's eyes to look at directly.

"Now," she says at last, when he has pulled free of her and she has broken the kiss, "do you think we can make it to the bed?"

He blinks—and she jerks her head towards the bedroll in the corner. For a moment his heart stops; then it sinks into his stomach like a stone, heavy and cold and unbearably ashamed, because _this_ is what he has to offer Hawke, who deserves gold and fur and softness: this, nothing more than a thin stained bedroll in a slave's cell, nothing more than a broken elf who cannot control even his own arousal.

"Hawke," he starts.

"Don't. I see where you've gone." Her thumbs stroke over his cheekbones, gently. "Stop worrying about that. I'm right where I want to be."

He buries his face in her shoulder, overwhelmed. Hawke tugs the hair at the nape of his neck until he meets her eyes; then she says, "Now. The bed."

-.-

They do not, as it turns out, make it to the bed immediately.

For a small room the walk is very long. Hawke stretches when they stand and just like that the thing inside him _howls_ and Fenris has her against the wall, maddened with _want_, arms still above her head and pinned there by his hand, her back arching towards him, her legs around his hips and his mouth pressed hard over her own. She comes that time—Fenris makes sure of it—and when she gasps his name and tightens around his cock and finger alike it is enough to have him baring his teeth in wild triumph.

He starts to let her down but she shakes her head, clenching harder around him— "Come on," she says, holding his gaze, holding his face in one hand as she drives the heat of her hips against him once, twice, three times—and with the defenselessness of a man tossed to a tidal wave he follows her over, shouting, his grip bruising on her muscled thighs.

"There," she says, laughing, sweating, her hair tousled and stuck to her cheeks, and Fenris can do nothing but kiss her.

He has nothing else to give her anyway. If that is what she truly wishes—he will give it, all of it, every part of him until there is nothing left that is not hers.

He belongs to her already, after all.

The pain of his drive is flagging now, eased by both release and _relief_, but there is still enough to keep him hard and wanting as Hawke kicks away her shoulder-guard and pushes him down onto the bedroll. "No," she says, when he starts to pull her down on top of him; she slides herself downward, that same unconquerable grin on her face, and before Fenris can stop her—and does he wish to, really?—she opens her mouth and sinks down on him in one smooth motion.

Fenris's lips part but nothing emerges; instead he clenches his eyes closed, the tendons of his throat wire-tight and straining, and tries to think of nothing. Hawke's tongue has always been clever; now she puts it to full use, drawing herself up and down again in long, languorous strokes, hollowing her cheeks, smoothing her cool fingers over his thighs and hips and the jumping muscles of his stomach. She is so gentle it hurts.

But this is not how he wants this to end—and he _does_ sense, in the mad reasonless way that all magic senses, that this is the last that he has in him. Not like this, this one-sided thing, Hawke giving only—no matter how sincere she is, Fenris wants to give her more than that.

He props himself on one elbow, pulls her free. It makes him suck in a breath for an instant, the loss of that wonderful heat—but then Hawke kisses him when he pulls her close, and settles atop him when he drags her legs to either side of his waist, and as he glides his hands down her bare and curving spine she arches into the touch—and he slides home.

Hawke laughs, breathless, and leans her head back until her throat is bared to him. Fenris touches the base of it, lets his hand skim down over her breast; his thumb drags over her nipple and she laughs again, covering his hand with her own, moving both of them against herself as he drives his hips into hers. She rocks against him until they find a mutual rhythm; they keep it for a while, voiceless, ageless, and then she leans down so that her breasts brush over his chest and smoothes her hands over either side of his jaw.

"You magnificent man," she murmurs, kissing him once, twice, three times. "There are no words for how much I love you."

"_Hawke—_" Fenris says, startled out of rhythm—but she takes it up instead, riding hard and quick against him until he is close, _so_ close—

—and she comes again, her nails scraping over his shoulders, her cry muffled in his neck. Her knees dig into his ribs and her hips grind down fiercely into his; it takes only two quick thrusts on his part and he comes himself, one last time, his knees bent behind her, his head curling up until his open mouth glances across her cheek. His heart pounds so hard in his chest he cannot hear over it; there is nothing but the gasp of his breath, nothing but _relief—_

There is nothing but Hawke.

-.-

Fenris cannot remember ever being so tired in his life. Granted, his memory has always been a fickle thing—but even like this, even with Hawke lying full atop him, her chest heaving as much for breath as his, the both of them on a lumpy thin bedroll in a grey-faded cell hidden beneath his master's estate—he feels as if he could sleep for a year, comfortably and without waking. The room is quiet, calm, the tight thing eased; the little square of light thrown by the high barred window falls squarely on the unlocked door, as if in gentle invitation. The sweat on his forehead and his shoulders is cooling at last.

But Hawke, it seems, has more strength than he; she shifts, groaning, and pulls free of him with only a slight catch of breath until she can flop beside him on her back. It feels—_good_, to have her beside him like that, better still when she moves to rest her head on his shoulder, but of frankest relief is that the pressure between his legs has vanished entirely, his cock limp and spent, the whole of his body and mind past exhaustion and into peace.

Fenris throws one arm over his eyes, sighing. He still aches after all of this, the muscles of his back and thighs crying out with each movement—but it is a _good_ ache, bone-deep, the pain of a broken thing beginning to heal instead of the sharper cut of a blade—or blood magic.

Hawke turns her head towards his, lets out a breath that ghosts over the dry lyrium in his chest. "Better?" she asks quietly, her fingertips tracing along the lines of his throat.

"Yes," he murmurs, and means it. His own hand slides into her hair; he kisses her, gently, and then pulls her against him, ignoring the protests of his overworked muscles. "I can't repay you for this, Hawke."

"You'd better try," she retorts, threading her fingers through his. "But not now. I'm so sore I'm going to be limping for a week."

He laughs because he can do little else, and Hawke presses her lips to the underside of his jaw. "I will," he tells her, "if you will allow me."

"Fool man," she says. "I would have thought the daring rescue spoke for itself."

"Then if there is a future to be had for us, Hawke, I will spend it gladly at your side."

"Or above me."

"Yes."

"Or under me."

"Yes."

"Or—"

"Hawke," he says then, rolling them both until he can look down at her framed between his hands. "I am yours."

"Oh, good," she says, and kisses him, and they neither of them mention the tears standing in her eyes.

"By the way," she adds eventually after he has settled beside her again, her hand tracing lazy circles on his arm, "I got you a present."

"Oh?"

"Oh, yes. One magister, trussed and bound and delivered." She glances at the ceiling as if counting floors, then shrugs and adds, "Somewhere above us, anyway."

Fenris glances up as well. "Danarius?"

"Who else?"

"You have always had a dubious sense of appropriate gifts."

"Don't be rude," Hawke says, thumping his chest lightly. "I just had three years' worth of sex with you in less than two hours."

_Not nearly_, he wants to say, but there is time enough for that now, time enough for so many things he had never thought to reach. He sits up, and Hawke rises with him; she fetches water and his clothes and armor from the guardsroom outside as he gathers her own from where it has scattered, and when they are both cleaned and dressed and straightened and _ready_ Hawke throws open the grated door without ceremony, as if this place of pain and need and want were only a room—only the past.

"_Well_," Hawke says, looking back at him, smiling. "Should we move on?"

"Yes," he says, and they go through the door together.

.

.

end.


End file.
